Luhut agrees LGBTs need rights protected but says they are diseased

The Jakarta Post

The Jakarta Post

Jakarta |
Tue, February 16, 2016 | 05:06 pm

Members of the LGBT community walk during during a queer freedom parade in Mumbai, India on Feb. 6, 2016. India's top court earlier this week agreed to re-examine a colonial-era law that makes homosexual acts punishable by up to a decade in prison.(AP/Rajanish Kakade) (AP/Rajanish Kakade)

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Members of the LGBT community walk during during a queer freedom parade in Mumbai, India on Feb. 6, 2016. India's top court earlier this week agreed to re-examine a colonial-era law that makes homosexual acts punishable by up to a decade in prison.(AP/Rajanish Kakade)

The debate over lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals (LGBTs) has continued, with Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan throwing in his two cents' worth.

Luhut on Monday called for the protection of the LGBT community's rights.

"Yes, I agree that religion forbids it, but to me is a right," Luhut said during a meeting between the government and House of Representatives commissions I and III as quoted by kompas.com.

Still, Luhut said, the condition was an illness involving a chromosome and LGBT people needed curing.

He previously expressed regret that members of the LGBT community had been victims of abuse and urged the public to refrain from showing prejudice toward them.

"What is Indonesia's stance on this [issue]? It would be a disgrace to ignore it," he said.

A neurosurgeon from private Mayapada Hospital, Roslan Yusni Hasan, said lesbianism, homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality were not diseases and therefore there was nothing to cure in LGBT people.

"We used to see it as an abnormality, but now it is just a variation of life. In biology, there is no such thing as an abnormality, everything is a variation," he told kompas.com last week.

The tendency to be LGBT starts in the womb, he said. Sex, gender and sexual orientation had different establishment processes, he said. Thus, there were men who were not masculine but it did not mean they were not attracted to the opposite sex.

Moreover, those with the XX chromosome are not necessarily female while those with the XY chromosome were not necessarily male. Based on biological facts, there are many genetic variations, such as missing or extra chromosomes, Roslan said. (liz/rin)(+)